As an aircraft lands, it is preferable that the landing speed, angle of decent, and rate of decent are within prespecified limits. This minimizes the chance of overloading components of the aircraft, which can lead to fatigue and/or failure of the components. For safety reasons, routine inspections of the landing gear and tires of an aircraft are carried out to check for signs that the tires and landing gear have not exceeded their operational limits. Such inspections are typically carried out at prespecified intervals, or when the maintenance crew is made aware of circumstances that may have overloaded the tires and/or landing gear (e.g., the pilot reports a rough landing).
During the inspections, maintenance personnel physically inspect the tires and landing gear for signs of stress and/or damage. As can be appreciated, such maintenance inspections are time consuming. Moreover, the inspections require the aircraft to be taken out of service, resulting in lost revenue for the airline.
A drawback to conventional methods for maintaining aircraft tires and landing gear is that presently there is no way to actually know when such inspections are required. For example, a pilot may believe that he had a “rough landing” and, thus, recommend inspection of the aircraft, when in fact the landing was well within acceptable limits. Conversely, the pilot may believe the landing was not excessively rough and, therefore, not recommend inspection of the aircraft, when in fact loads experienced during landing exceeded maximum recommended parameters.